Tag: The Stories of Us After Them

Last month I wrote, revised, polished, submitted, had rejected, and submitted again a short story called “The Fog of a Future Forgotten”. I finally got a solid working outline done for The Stories of Us After Them. And I have Murderville Season 2 all ready to roll starting in January, with the official promo coming out next month for patrons and in December for everyone else. So, I am heading into this NaNo with nothing pressing hanging over my head.

This year I’m going to do something a little different. Normally, I pick one project (either one novel or two connected novellas) and then write 2,000 words a day, 4,000 words a day on weekends, in order to get it done well before Thanksgiving. But this year I struggled to pick between two novels that I’d outlined back in September that would be ideal for dashing out 50,000 words or so in a few weeks.

So, I came up with a compromise.

My official NaNo novel for 2017 is going to be The Fate of the Immortal’s Assistant. My goal is to write at least 3,000 words a day, which will have it done in a little over two weeks. And then when it’s done, I’ll start writing The Coop Run and try to finish it before the end of the month. If I don’t, no big deal. My official NaNo will already be done. I should have enough of the novel’s first draft done that finishing it up in the first week or so of December should be no trouble.

I admit that this is pretty ambitious. But NaNo has been something that’s always allowed me to push myself and get creative about how I do that. Every year I think maybe I should be done and every year I find something to write and a way to make it challenging and interesting. This is where I grow.

September was the the month of organization. I cleared a few ideas out of my head so I have more room to think as well as cleared a couple of things off of the To Do List of Doom.

The final blueprint of The Star Reader is done. It took a lot longer than I anticipated as it turned out to be much more involved than I thought it would be. It’s going to be interesting to see how this blueprint holds up when I write the first draft.

I also outlined The Coop Run and The Fate of the Immortal’s Assistant. The outlines are pretty basic compared to the blueprint I did for The Star Reader because these stories are a little more straightforward and a little simpler. At least in my mind.

The intended outline for The Stories of Us After Them is still undone, though. This story is much more ambitious than anything else I’ve ever done which explains why I thought something that would be easily done…isn’t. I will keep futzing with it. Eventually, it will all come together. Meanwhile, I did revise and post the related story “The Zookeepers Liberation” on Prose.

I also submitted a poem called “Il N’est Pas Mon Mari” that I’ve been working for weeks to a contest and wrote the first draft of a story called “The Fog of a Future Forgotten”, which I plan to revise and submit. It’s an idea I’ve had for a while, but only finding a possible fit for it gave me the motivation to write it.

So, this month, I plan on revising, polishing, and submitting “The Fog of a Future Forgotten” before I go to Seattle next week and polishing Murderville Season 2 so I can get it all scheduled and ready to go for next year after I get back.

And I’ll work on something while I’m in Seattle.

Okay, yes, that doesn’t sound very definitive. But, I haven’t decided what project would be best suited to work on during the trip. It’s a given that I will be snapping pictures and taking in as much of the vibe as possible as stories always need settings (and I’ll also be doing some non-writing related work as well), but it might be a good time to work on a smaller, easier project.

I mean, yeah, I could also just not write, but what fun is that?

And finally, I’ll nail down what I’m doing for NaNoWriMo. It’ll either be The Coop Run or The Fate of the Immortal’s Assistant. But not both.

I mean it, self. Not both.

If you’re a Murderville patron, look out for a paid teaser episode going live on October 10th. It’s a preview for Season 2. Also, if you’re not a patron, now is the time to become one. Not only will you get to read the first season, The Last Joke, and the upcoming new season, but we’re only a few bucks away from hitting the $25 goal, which means a Murderville Mini-Mystery! Only $1 per episode gets you in on the fun. $2 per episode also gets you bonus material. It’s a killer deal.

So, I drove myself mad in August. I pretty much overloaded my circuits by insisting I do ALL THE THINGS AT ONCE instead of, you know, over the course of the entire 31 days. And I did myself no favors by thinking something was due this month when it wasn’t. I am a dumbass like that sometimes.

Despite my need to drive myself insane, I did get what I hope to be the final revision of (Vampires) Made in America done as well as Murderville season 2 revised. This was achieved by shoving the plotting of The Star Reader to the very back burner and turning the forward burners on high so I couldn’t reach it until the end of the month. I’ve got that blueprint about half done.

This month I am not going to drive myself insane because I’m going to do things to help ease part of the pains that were cramping by brain last month.

A big part of my issue is ideas. I have several right now and they’re jumbled in my head and what I really need to do is get them out and outlined so I can free up some space in that hellscape. The objective this month is to get The Star Reader, The Stories of Us After Them, and my untitled space story outlined/blueprinted/organized outside of my head so I can see them.

Speaking of The Stories of Us After Them, this is an idea that’s been percolating for years and the short stories “Take the 55 North” and “Items Left Behind” are part of that. I plan on revising and polishing another story that belongs with them called “The Zookeepers Liberation” and then posting it on Prose as well.

I’m also going to revise the Murderville Mini-Mystery, in the event we reach the $25 Patreon goal.

Hey, just because season 1 is over doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening. Become a $1 patron and get the free ebook version of The Last Joke that will be available only to patrons on September 12th. Become a $2 patron and you get the ebook and bonus material, including a Murderville Season 2 teaser poem that was released last month.

In other publishing news, Come to the Rocks will be published by NineStar Press in March of 2018. More details to come slowly as I’ve got several months to ramp up your interest.